We Rely On Your Support: This site is primarily supported by advertisements. Ads are what have allowed this site to be maintained for the past 15 years. We do our best to ensure only clean, relevant ads are shown, when any nasty ads are detected, we work to remove them ASAP. If you would like to view the site without ads while still supporting our work, please consider our ad-free Phoronix Premium. You can also consider a tip via PayPal.Windows 8 Beats Ubuntu Linux For Intel "Haswell" OpenGL Performance

Here's a look at the GL3 Unvanquished performance again, but this time using
the Phoronix Test Suite to compare the performance at a variety of resolutions.

Unvanquished's Daemon engine with OpenGL 3 renderer had more frame latency
spikes under Linux than with the Intel Windows driver.

Overall, the Intel Windows driver is noticeably faster than the Intel Linux
driver at this point for Haswell. The Intel Windows driver being speedier is also
the case still for Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge hardware, so don't expect any major
breakthroughs soon, but the Intel OTC Linux developers continue to work broadly
on improving their open-source driver's performance while enabling more OpenGL
functionality and new hardware enablement (Valley View / Bay Trail, Broadwell,
etc).

The only cases where the Intel Linux driver was faster for the Core i7 4770K
with HD Graphics 4600 was the very undemanding OpenArena game and then for the
Pixmark Volplosion GpuTest it had a narrow victory.

Aside from the Intel Windows driver delivering faster OpenGL performance, it's
also still leading on delivering OpenGL 4.x support over OpenGL 3.1 as is officially
compliant with right now under Linux. The Intel OpenCL Linux support is also still
in its early stages with there really being nothing besides the CPU-only Intel
OpenCL SDK for Linux and the questionable Beignet.

As both the Windows and Linux Intel OpenGL drivers continue to mature for this
new hardware, we'll be back with more cross-platform benchmarks. For now you can
expect the Windows Intel driver to lead anywhere from 10~20% as was common but
with visually demanding workloads the Windows driver can be nearly twice as fast.

Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 10,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.

The mission at Phoronix since 2004 has centered around enriching the Linux hardware experience. In addition to supporting our site through advertisements, you can help by subscribing to Phoronix Premium. You can also use our NewEgg.com shopping links when making online purchases or contribute to Phoronix through a PayPal tip.